The diversity and dynamism of India play a central role in Photography Professor Peter Sramek’s teaching as well as his own art.

In 2012, for instance, Peter led a workshop on sustainability issues at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad. Back home in Toronto, Peter’s links to India have helped his students expand their knowledge of global art production and concerns. With funding from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, Peter brought NID’s head of Photography and two students to OCAD U, enabling them to participate in a workshop with his International Collaboration Studio students. Peter has also taken OCAD U students to the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, and he has facilitated online collaborations between photography students in India and Canada.
 

In this story we have included six of Peter’s photographic collages from his Ahmedabad Cross-section, and a first-person look inside his artistic practice:
 

During my first visit to Ahmedabad, I was fascinated by the transition from a city with a 600-year history to a modern economic centre. It had just been named “the most livable large city in India” by a national magazine, and was undergoing some major development along the river that divides the old and new cities. Controversial relocation of the urban poor prompted heated discussions as the area was cleared for Governor Modi’s vision.

I walked from the train station in the east of the old city, directly west to the river and then out to the new ring highway. I passed through the lively, old markets, to colonial and post-colonial neighbourhoods and finally out to new commercial developments topped with billboards promoting consumer products, condominium oases and luxury holiday getaways.

The structure of the visual documentation mirrors the experience of walking a line and aims to capture the high energy of this busy city, as well as the contrasts of old and new.